


Day 53 - Every Death Has Its Day

by Amemait



Series: Dan and Death [4]
Category: The Sandman (Comics), Watchmen
Genre: GFY, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-10
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2017-12-18 07:37:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/877282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amemait/pseuds/Amemait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This might have been the start of a longer fic. It may yet be the start of a longer fic. For now, however, it stands as it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It’s been a year since… Well. It’s been a year since everything, when she knocks on his door at half-an-hour-to-midnight and hopes that he’ll answer. Her day is almost up, but there’s one person that she’d really like to see before everything gets called time.

There’s silence for an awfully long time. Or maybe it just seems longer because she is vulnerable out here, and it’s cold, and dark, and even though the ‘Manhattan Attacks’ as the world calls them have managed to force down crime rates, there’s bound to be the odd loony left, and she really doesn’t like to think about what might happen if she were hurt in this form.

“Dan, I know you’re in there! It’s me, please, just let me in…” She doesn’t laugh at the irony of letting her in. Her day has really seriously sucked this time around. Death Walking The Earth always sounds impressive but usually ends with her completely exhausted.

And she doesn’t actually know, per-se. She’s just hoping. She’s been doing that a lot today.

Okay, so maybe today hasn’t really sucked that much.

The wind picks up, and she shivers, burying her hands in her jacket pockets and wishing she’d thought to bring gloves.


	2. Chapter 2

Dan hears a knocking at the door nearly at the middle of the night and he doesn't scream into his pillow before he gets up.

If this is Laurie, come to try again (for the third time), or worse if this is a scam-

It's neither.

It's a girl with long and messy black hair being whipped about by the wind, shivering but looking at him with warmth.

"You're home," she whispers.

Daniel stands aside and lets her in wordlessly.

The girl looks like her.

"Once every hundred years," she explains with no preamble. "I get a day. One day."

She turns and looks at Daniel.

"I thought I might spend the last of this one in your company. I've done all I can with what I've had of this day, but there was one thing left unfinished."

Dan locks the door behind her. "You want some coffee?" he offers, and his voice feels like it's coming from very far away.

"Coffee might be nice," the girl yawns out, then looks surprised at herself for the act.

"I'm out of Nite Owl," he warns, because luxury expenses like fancy Veidt Industries Coffee have been out of his budget (and come to that, lately outside of his moral scruples), living and working where he has been.

New York is no longer the grand lady she once was, but Dan had decided he'd be damned to see Adrian succeed destroying their home.

He'd had to try.

"Something warm I can share with you," the girl answers.

"So. One day?"

"I wanted to spend some of it with my friend," she answers honestly, trailing after him.

"And how's your brother?" Daniel asks, leading her to the kitchen table and asking feeler questions as though she were a scared victim of a street mugging, rather than who he suspects.

"In turn, mysterious, an idiot, and disappeared." She shrugs, seating herself at his table. "My sisters are in turn lost and losing. And my sister-brother is smug. It is infuriating."

That counted off all six, although Daniel still had no idea of all their names or which name went with which descriptor, aside from the idiot and the disappeared. Still, it was proof enough.

"Milk?"

"However you take yours, please," she answers.


End file.
